Wow! Where did the weekend go?? I hope you’ll forgive me for cramming two days of posts into one. This weekend just flew by! It’s probably because I start my third quarter of school tomorrow. Your “last” weekends always go by so quickly:/.

Saturday morning I did an 8 mile long run with my track star friends–Karen and Melle. That was after a breakfast of cinnamon Life cereal and some strawberries with strawberry Dannon Light and Fit yogurt. Mmm.

So, Karen and Melle came over to my house to run, which meant that it was my job to plan the running route. We usually do long runs on a trail near my house, but this was the first time we’d done more than six miles on it. I looked at the trail on a map, and it looked like it kept going north for a while from where we’d turned around before so I figured “no problem,” we’d just keep running on the trail for another mile and turn around, to make eight.

Sort of problem. First, the torrential downpours on Friday had knocked down a lot of branches and flooded some of the creeks…so we had a precarious creek crossing that caused our running shoes to get pretty wet. Oops. Then, we hit a dead end. We could see that the trail kept going on the other side of the creek…but we couldn’t figure out how to get over there. Oops again.

So instead we decided to just turn around and add on our extra mileage in one of the nearby neighborhoods, but that involved jumping over some wooden guard rails, haha. Between the creek crossing, fallen branch dodging, mud puddle sloshing, extra mileage adding, and guard rail jumping, it was a bit of an adventure and not really our typical long run…but we just called it practice for our mud run in April!:)

After my crazy run adventures and getting my feet all wet, I was in the mood for a hot lunch! The last of the taco soup (sad face) and an open-faced hot ham sandwich…awesome!

For our exciting Saturday night dinner we decided to make more veggie pizza! We were out of fresh red peppers so this time we used some leftover roasted red peppers (I had used them previously for my mozzarella and red pepper stuffed turkey burgers). The pizza was DELICIOUS. I will definitely be making this again (and again).

Before you judge me and my three pieces–I did a recipe nutrition calculator for the pizza because I was curious (I don’t usually count calories, but every once in a while if I feel like i have NO clue how many calories are in something, I’ll count it), and I think it’s only about 500 calories for these three pieces. Much healthier than “real” pizza!

Oh, and I did try to add some more veggies with a strawberry and almond salad on the side:)

And then I may have eaten 50 Twizzlers. Oops:/

Sunday morning I went grocery shopping! Woot! More on that tomorrow, I think.

This post is getting long, so I’ll skip the food on Sunday (typical breakfast, leftover veggie pizza for lunch, Muscle Milk and an apple for a snack, and Chipotle for dinner [another coupon]:) and get straight to the workout!

Sunday afternoon was GORGEOUS (58 degrees and sunny!), and I was SO excited to be meeting up with some friends for a long bike ride! Eric and I met up with a friend of mine from my Team in Training team, as well as my friend Jeanette from school and her husband!

We must have gotten over excited about our ride….because we ended up riding for 38 miles! I was supposed to get 30-35 in, so I guess 38 is not really THAT much, but after a recovery week and not hitting my weekend brick mileage for the past couple weeks, 38 miles HURT!

We all were feeling great for the first two hours….but then, we all hit the wall! Eric and I each had a Gu at the turn-around point (I had chocolate outrage! It’s my favorite! It tastes like chocolate frosting!:), but 100 calories of gu, a bottle of zero calorie Powerade, and a bottle of water, was not enough to get us through a 38-mile ride. I should have known better, but it has been a while since I’ve ridden this long. Lesson relearned!!

After we got off the bikes I was exhausted, and the LAST thing I wanted to do was run, but I was determined not to let another week get by without a brick workout. I ran two miles after I got off the bike and HOLY MONKEYS it was the longest two miles of my life!

I seriously almost cried thinking about how for the half iron I will have to run a HALF MARATHON…oh yeah, and after having done an additional 18 miles on top of the 38 miles I biked. Oh yeah, and after having swam 1.2 miles. Crying….lots of crying.

I did manage to run my first mile in 8:30 and the second in 7:57, which considering how horrible I was feeling after the bike ride, I was very happy with, especially considering my breathing sounded like a cow having an asthma attack and my legs felt like someone tied 50-lb weights to my shoes!

Still, I have a long way to go to be ready for this half ironman! This workout was a good kind of hard, though, and it has me really motivated to build on this new level of fitness!

But let me tell you how good my Chipotle chicken fajita bowl for dinner tasted and how ready I am for a day off tomorrow and a recovery week next week! Ah, recovery week, how I love you.

4 Responses to Where Did the Weekend Go?

Erin, it looks like you have been very motivated in training for your runs! I love your commitment! Also, the strawberry/almond salad looks delicious and so does the homemade veggie pizza. I’d suggest putting green peppers on it too… YUMM, my favorite! =)

Girl, YOU ARE GORGEOUS!!! Your food looks absolutely amazing….I want that pizza!! What an adventurous run….sounds like so much fun! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE QUOTE you sent me…..I got the goosebumps. I LOVE your blog and I hope you are having an amazing day!